By Eric Wesoff:NEX­Tracker, a designer and builder of single-​​​​axis PV track­ers, just announced a $25 mil­lion B round led by new investor SJF Ven­tures along with Ten­nen­baum Cap­i­tal Part­ners and exist­ing investors Sigma Part­ners and DBL Investors. The round closed at the end of December.Dan Shugar, the CEO of NEX­Tracker, left the CEO posi­tion at Solaria to spin out the tracker firm in 2013 after a year of incu­ba­tion within the PV mod­ule maker.Shugar told GTM last night, “I don’t know any­one who has ramped a com­pany as fast as we have.”He said, “We deliv­ered about 275 megawatts in 2014…but this year will be well north of 1 gigawatt.” He also told GTM that pro­duc­tion capac­ity is being ramped to 200 megawatts per month. The track­ers can be built in the U.S., Asia and Europe, with mul­ti­ple sup­pli­ers in each prod­uct category.

Nancy Pfund, a part­ner at DBL Investors and a board mem­ber at NEX­Tracker, tells GTM, “As we’ve seen over the past year or two, solar hard­ware is hav­ing an invest­ment moment. Any com­pa­nies that drive down costs and/​​or increase per­for­mance (think Zep and Silevo) are in a posi­tion to be attrac­tive as the indus­try grows and indus­try play­ers look for ways to increase sys­tem prof­itabil­ity. NEX­Tracker fits squarely in this space, as track­ing sys­tems can boost the eco­nom­ics of ground-​​​​mount solar farms in a sig­nif­i­cant way”

Pfund added, “Every­one knows that the global PV indus­try is grow­ing fast, but many peo­ple don’t know that utility-​​​​scale sys­tems are grow­ing fastest, and that track­ers are one of the fastest-​​​​growing PV appli­ca­tions, with 17 per­cent of global PV installed on track­ers in 2013, pro­jected to grow to 27 per­cent for 2017. In fact, NEX­Tracker is one of the fastest-​​​​growing com­pa­nies in our portfolio.”